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It was just a regular Tuesday sales meeting at Re/Max Alliance of Evergreen — until 7News walked through the door and proclaimed a hero.

That hero is real estate agent Kate Mondragon, who for 15 years has taken an ever-growing load of food to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Waving one hand over her chest and using the other to wipe away tears, Mondragon received the "Everyday Hero" plaque from newscaster Mitch Jelniker as her co-workers clapped and cheered.

Evergreen’s Alliance for Sustainability started the way many groups of its kind do: over dinner.

“A bunch of us saw that there wasn't a group that supported or championed sustainability in the Evergreen area,” said Tupper Briggs, EAS+Y’s treasurer. “So we thought, rather than being a fringe group of radical preservationists, we wanted to be a mainstream voice for doing things to promote sustainability.”

The second annual Festival of Trees is ready to delight this weekend, and if trees alone don't yuck up your yule, the festival is coupled with the 13th annual Holiday Wine Tasting.

The trees will be on display and open for bids from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday at The Barn at Marshdale, and for $40 attendees can also enjoy the wine tasting from 4:30 to 8 p.m. Attendees will be able to vote for their favorite trees and submit silent bids to take one home.

A fire inspection is mandatory for new construction in commercial and residential structures, and that review is about to cost more.

The Evergreen Fire Protection District board granted Fire Marshal Frank Dearborn's request to increase fees for all commercial and residential fire safety inspections at the board meeting Nov. 12. Currently most fees hover around $75, but with the increase, from $5 to $100 will be added starting in January.

Evergreen businessman Jim Sherwood has had the task this week of making people cry — and laugh, and shout for joy.

Sherwood, who was the impetus behind a fund-raising event Nov. 2 at the Elks Lodge that raised $30,000 for victims of the September flooding in Evergreen, hand-delivered most of the 27 checks early this week.

On Monday morning, he met with the owners of Cactus Jack’s Saloon and several of its employees, plus the building owner, to present checks.

Several readers of this column have called me during the last month to tell me they have had a “real honest-to-goodness Eastern blue jay” at their feeders. This is an exciting event, which seems to be occurring with more regularity each fall. They stay for a day or two and then usually disappear. This bold, sassy blue jay has apparently worked its way west along the water courses over the past many years.

By Greg Dobbs
Over the weekend I found myself bad-mouthing elk. I was shuttling some out-of-town artists to their cars at the end of Center for the Arts Evergreen’s annual Winterfest at Evergreen High School, and we had to stop for a herd of 100 or more elk meandering across the parking lot, as if they owned the place. The nerve of those elk!